I Think I Hate Christmas

Really. Christmas sucks in a lot of ways and I’m just about as sick of it as I can get. Writing that, I’m fairly convinced I’ll be even more sick of it next year.

Hear me out for a minute.

Major retail outlets start having a Christmas section sometime in August, more than four months before the actual holiday itself. I (like everyone else) am supposed to spend hundreds of dollars on decorations and thousands of dollars on gifts every year, plus whatever the annual holiday feast is supposed to cost. Spend, spend, spend.

To get me in the mood, those same retail outlets move to a Christmas music format the instant Halloween is over, in some cases before.

Don’t forget cards and wrapping paper. And gift tags; those are far more important than you know. All single-use stuff.

Open your wallet and spend.

Extra events, extra travel. Did you notice the price of gas go up?

Spend, spend, spend. Rack up a little more debt. Mortgage your future so you don’t look like a cheapskate this Christmas. You’ve got the rest of your life to pay it down.

The forced togetherness. I want to get together with my friends and family because we want to, not because society tells me that’s what we have to do. I actually like my family even, though she may be shocked to learn it, my sister, in spite of the fact that we have to be very careful about the subjects that come up in conversation or we wind up arguing.

The “War” on Christmas. Why does anyone think anyone else cares how they celebrate a holiday? I just need certain people to stop telling me how I need to celebrate it. While we’re on the subject, those same folks also need to stop whining about how no one can make them stop saying ‘Merry Christmas’ and force them to say ‘Happy Holidays’ instead. I hope you have a merry Christmas. I hope it’s everything you want it to be. But ‘Happy Holidays’ is more inclusive, takes in unknowns, and recognizes that there are huge numbers of people, even in the country I live in, who celebrate something other than Christmas. They deserve a little joy, too, don’t they?

And every year, the Salvation Army trying to pass itself off as a charity. The Salvation Army is a church, as noted in multiple places on their website. Their mission statement contains the phrase “exists to share the love of Jesus Christ”. Their core values are “Salvation, Holiness and Intimacy with God”. Church. Religion. They may do charitable works, though they’re not accountable to anyone for how or how much they happen to deliver.

All the money we spend could actually do something other than make the pile in our local landfill bigger. If you spend $1000 on Christmas crap (which is pretty light for a lot of families these days), how much good could you have done by getting it to an actual charity that does actual work to help actual people.

Stop telling me I have to be cheerful because it’s Christmas. I don’t. Not today, not tomorrow, and not because it’s Christmas. Maybe I’ve got mental health issues and I don’t need you making me feel guilty because I’m not cheerful. Maybe my life situation is hard at the moment. Maybe I’m just not a cheerful guy.

And no, by the way, I don’t want to go to your (or any) church or community centre for the special Christmas service/pageant/choir. I’m good, thanks.

Christmas just digs us in deeper, individually and collectively. As it’s currently celebrated in our culture, it’s a blight on the face of our personal finances, our economy, and our society.

So, yeah, I hate Christmas. More every year.

But I totally want you to have a merry one, or Channukah, or Yule, or Kwanza, or Festivus, or whatever you happen to celebrate. Enjoy the season. Enjoy your celebration. Enjoy the people you spend it with. But I want everyone to be happy and healthy all the time, not just at Christmas, and I want us all to look out for each other and to make the world a better place.